1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



459 



General 

 Correspondence 



SYMPOSIUM ON SHIPPING HONEY IN 

 CAR LOTS. 



'In our issue for Feb. 1, p. 72, we stated that the plan 

 of shippinir honey in car lots acainst sight draft with 

 bill of lading attached was giving rise to more or less 

 dissatisfaction between the shipper and the consignee; 

 tliat we had been called upon to arbitrate between the 

 parties, and that it was almost impossible to secure a 

 satisfactory settlement; that the shipper in very many 

 cases, and perliaps most cases, was not the producer 

 or producers, but a middleman; that he bought up va- 

 rious lots of honey, each lot graded upon the individ- 

 ual notion of the producer of the same. The privilege 

 of inspecting the car before payment of the draft, we 

 added, did not allow the consignee to form any accu- 

 rate idea of the contents of the car; that very often a 

 car would be shipped to some city, and the only oppor- 

 tunity for inspection was perhaps in some freight-yard 

 where it would be impossible to unload any portion of 

 the honey in order that other portions of it, further 

 back, might receive any kind of inspection. We gave 

 it as our opinion that the sight-draft bill-of-lading-at- 

 tached method of settlement was far from satisfactory; 

 that some other scheme ought to be devised, and sug- 

 gested that the shipper allow the consignee an oppor- 

 tunity to unload the car, inspect the same after being 

 unloaded, and then, if it is not satisfactory, to hold it 

 subject to the order of the shipper. The difficulty has 

 come up, time and again, of wjiere cars have been re- 

 je.'ited. The honey is then in the hands of the railroad 

 c>mpany; and if the weather is cold, as it has hap- 

 pened to be in some instances, the honey is subjected, 

 perhaps, to a zero temperature. 



We laid the whole matter before a number of large 

 producers and comb-honey buyers to get their opin- 

 ions on the general proposition, and received in re- 

 turn a number of responses. As the matter was hard- 

 ly seasonable last winter, we have held the same until 

 the time for shipping comb honey, and we now pre- 

 sent the different replies right here.— ED.] 



THE IMPORTANCE OF HAVING A SATISFACTORY 

 REPORT OF THE CONSIGNEE'S FINANCIAL 

 RESPONSIBILITY; THE CAR-LOT BUYER, NOT 

 THE PRODUCER, RESPONSIBLE FOR DISSAT- 

 ISFACTION. 



In the twelve years that I have been man- 

 ager of the Colorado Honey-producers' Asso- 

 ciation, many carloads of honey have been 

 sold by us with sight draft attached to bill of 

 lading. We have also received a number of 

 carloads with sight draft attached to bill of 

 lading, and have therefore had plenty of op- 

 portunity to study this question from all sides. 



As we are a co-operative association of bee- 

 keepers, our main business is the marketing 

 of the crops of our members, principally comb 

 honey, in carload lots. We generally ship 

 the same direct from the locality where it 

 was produced to our customers east. All 

 honey shipped out by us must be graded and 

 packed according to Colorado rules, and is 

 inspected before it goes into the car. Lots 

 nr)t coming up to the requirements have to 

 be graded over before they are accepted. 

 The loading and packing is also done by the 

 association; and if the car is shipped with 

 sight draft attached to bill of lading we must 

 have a satisfactory report on the consignee's 

 financial responsibility and business reputa- 

 tion, based upon experiences of their cus- 

 tomers, before the car leaves. The rating of 

 a firm in Dun's and Bradstreet'smaybe high- 



ly satisfactory, but at the same time it would 

 be a risky proposition to ship such firm a 

 carload ot comb honey sight draft attached to 

 bill of lading. It is q^uite a common occur- 

 rence to see carloads of produce turned down 

 when shipped on such terms by firms hav- 

 ing a good commercial rating, especially 

 where the shipper is a long distance away, 

 when there is no good reason for such rejec- 

 tion. Some of the causes for such action are, 

 a declining market, an oversupply of the 

 commodity in the locality, or an attempt to 

 force the "shipper to make concessions. 

 Should the shipper be an individual without 

 any extended business connections, such a 

 turndown is more likely to happen than with 

 an established firm that could readily ascer- 

 tain the exact condition in which the car ar- 

 rived at destination, and, if necessary, divert 

 it quickly to some other point, and give the 

 firm employing such tactics a well-merited 

 exposure. 



To prevent these altogether too frequent 

 abuses of the confidence of the shipper, an 

 organization was established called "The 

 Produce Reporter Company," with head- 

 quarters in Chicago, which gives the finan- 

 cial rating as well as the experiences of ship- 

 pers with receivers, and vice versa. If a car- 

 load shipment of one of its members is turn- 

 ed down, the head office is notified by wire, 

 and they instruct one of their nearest inspect- 

 ors to investigate the cause of rejection, and 

 the result of such investigation is then pub- 

 lished in their weekly reports. It can readi- 

 ly be seen that this affords quite a protection 

 to the shipper, and at the same time it also 

 protects business firms against careless or 

 dishonest shippers and producers. While 

 an individual producer of an occasional car- 

 load of honey may feel that he could not af- 

 ford the expense of this service, a co-opera- 

 tive association of producers should not be 

 without it, as it is the means of holding the 

 members to a careful application of their 

 grading-rules, induces better business meth- 

 ods, and gives needed protection. 



If investigated it will be found that one of 

 the principal causes of dissatisfaction with 

 carload shipments of comb honey are in- 

 stances where same has been gathered up by 

 honey-buyers from many different producers, 

 having different standards for grading their 

 honey, or none at all, and using any style of 

 shipping-case that comes handy. Some of 

 these lots may be closely graded, properly 

 packed, and give satisfaction to the most ex- 

 acting buyer, while others are dumped into 

 cases out of the supers with no grading or 

 scraping. The buyer will sometimes pay 

 very little more for the well-graded lot; and, 

 as a consequence, a premium is placed on 

 carelessness; therefore, when trouble arises 

 over such a car lot it is not just to haul the 

 bee-keepers over the coals for it (the careless 

 grader generally does not read bee journals ) , 

 the car- lot buyer that picked up these various 

 lots in the country being the person that should 

 be exposed. Such a buyer saw each lot, and 

 inspected it before paying the producer t\ r 

 it, and knew what the car contained; and if 



